WinXP Pro will ONLY boot from CD 2

[Jenke]

anyone seen this one before? its got me completely baffled..
i did a fresh install of XP and as soon as i reboot i get the error message:
Boot from cd:
Boot Disk Error: Insert System Disk and Press Enter to continue

so i put the XP cd back in and it boots up fine..
ran every test i could think of on the HD, all came back with no errors..
reformatted, and deleted the 20gb and 60gb partitions i had, and made one 80gb partition..

same thing

interesting note is that when i decided to boot up a win98 cd and fdisk/format again, i hit enter to boot from hard drive and it booted in..
it will work consistently if there is a cd in the drive that has an OS on it, but it will not boot to an OS on its own..

tried specifying HDD0, HDD1, HDD2 in the boot order thinking it was trying to go to CD first and not getting to the HD, but no dice..

any suggestions??

 

[bcastner]

The boot hard disk must be an active partition. Boot from a Win98SE boot diskette, and make the partition active with fdisk.

 

[Jenke]

went into fdisk..
its the only partition detected
and it is set to active

formatting as fat32 right now... seeing if it was an NTFS problem..

im starting to think the HD has some underlying errors...

 

[MasterofNone]

Do you have access to another PC??? If so swap the hard drives over. Does the hard disk start to boot when in another pc (don't allow it to boot, just see if it starts the process). If it does, probably a motherboard issue, if not then more than likely not a hard disk problem.

one last thought, and not meaning to insult your intelligence, but this is a primary partition isn't it?

 

[Jenke]

left the pc at work for the weekend.. tuesday ill try swapping the hd out and into a new comp, and a new hd into the old comp and post the results..

and not insulted at all.. even im amazed at some of the stupidest things ive missed in my years of working w/ this stuff..

thanks for your help

 

[jdunderhill]

Jenke I have exactly the same thing with my uncles HDD the things I have tried so far are

FIXBOOT - Didn't work
Check Boot Order - All ok
Reinstall XP - Still same problem

FIXMBR from recovery console in WIn XP gives you a scary message about deleting all partitions and losing data etc

This is what happens to my uncle:

Boot order is:

HDD-0
CD ROM
Floppy

Upon booting get error

Boot Disk Error: Insert System Disk and Press Enter to continue

I insert Win XP CD and then press enter and then it boots the Hard Disk exactly as you mentioned

This is a real headache for me, I have reinstalled WIn XP also and still have the same problem, the HDD C: partition is definately set to active

I will watch this post carefully, a star will definately be awarded for the solution

My uncles PC by the way is:

Athlon 2600
80 GB Maxtor
512 MB DDR RAM
ARTEC DVD ROM
Pioneer DVD-R
Wireless Mouse/Keyboard

Do you have anything similar Jenke?

Wondering if it would be the same mobo etc

 

[bcastner]

jdunerhill,

Disconnect the floppy drive power and controller cable, change the BIOS to reflect no floppy drive, and test.

 

[jdunderhill]

Hi

I will give that a go, if it is not the floppy drive any other ideas which might be causing it?

The CDROM seems to be booting the HDD so do you think there are missing/corrupt files on the HDD

Many thanks

Jamie

 

[MasterofNone]

Can we see a copy of your boot.ini

 

[Jenke]

jdunderhill.. sounds like the exact same system..

im using:
AMD XP2400+
512Mb RAM
80Gb Maxtor (hmmmmmmmm)
MSI KM4ML motherboard
LG DVD-RAM

i read another post suggesting copying the d:\i386\ntldr, and d:\i386\ntdetect.com files back over to C:

i did this and it didnt help..

masterofnone - here is the boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

ive tried screwing around with it, and every time i changed it, it wouldnt boot at all.. i changed the partition(1) to 0, and 2, and got varying error messages.. (error in hal.dll, hardware incompatibility...)

Ive booted up without the HD and CDROM plugged in, no dice.. swapped jumpers on cd and hd to switch between master/slave, slave/master, and cable select.. same thing..

Thanks

Jon

 

[MasterofNone]

Only thing I can think of at the moment is the partition is not primary., but will have a think on what else might be casing this

 

[Jenke]

well after screwing around, formatting, fdisking, formatting, fdisking, etc.. i decided to plug the HD into the secondary IDE chain.. kept it as the only drive in the computer, and did an fdisk/format while it was in the secondary chain... i formatted it as a 2Gb FAT drive (it was a win95 boot disk.. did the 'set partition as max size and set as active')
i did the format c: /s to copy sys files over too.

booted up off the HD and it went in just fine
put it back on primary chain and booted it and it worked that time..

did the winxp setup and deleted the partition and created a new 20Gb partition and it worked

its entirely possible the connection on the primary chain was just loose the first time and unplugging/plugging back in worked, but in any case, that did fix it..

jdunderhill, i hope this helps you in some way

thanks for all your input guys..

Jon

 

[jdunderhill]

Hi

Im glad you managed to get this fixed, I will do exactly the same with my uncles PC when I go up there this weekend

Thanks for all yours and everyone elses helpful postings

Many thanks

Jamie

 

[bigtexusa]

Same exact problem here too. My HD is a segate 120 GB though. I hate to have to reformat and reinstall though as I have lived with it for awhile and it would take a lot to get everything back in order. Any other thoughts?

 

[linney]

jdunderhill,

266745 - Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266745&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

305595 - HOW TO: Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305595

MBRWork 1.07b

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

 

[bcastner]

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q291/9/80.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[Jenke]

yea i screwed around w/ that bootcfg from the recovery console but it didnt seem to help me.. maybe it will help the other guys having that problem.

another interesting note that i just remembered... i was getting an error message about the mobo looking for 80pin IDE cable... I have the same error on my home computer now cuz im only using 40 pin, but after i formatted on the secondary chain, it stopped coming up with that message

i really dont think that should make a difference, since data is still being passed across and written to the HD from cd, but i suppose anything is possible..

possibly a low level format may help as well to totally erase the boot sector on the drive..

personally i didnt have any luck w/ the fixmbr, or bootcfg without reformatting though..

 

[bcastner]

It makes a huge difference.

Please read:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314477

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q297/1/85.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[jdunderhill]

Hi there

I managed to get on my uncles PC at the weekend and all I can say is what a headache!

I guess it would be best to list all of the stuff that I have tried so far:

- Checked Boot Order - all ok, HDD set before CD etc
- Checked boot.ini - No extra entries, definately ok
- Checked for active partition - C: only is set to active
- Swapped Power supply plug and ribbon connector - No difference
- Unplugged PC Power Cord - Longshot but didn't work
- Reset BIOS to factory defaults - No luck
- Done FIXBOOT through windows recovery console
- Reisntalled Windows XP - No luck

The only thing I haven't tried yet was the the FIXMBR because I was scared off by the error message, I read the post above and if it is ok to ignore that I will go for it

Thanks to everyones valuable posts, glad Jenke is sorted and good luck bigtexusa

I will try a FIXMBR when I next go to my uncles

Cheers

Jamie

 

[rudyz]

I was searching the web for information on my problem when I found this post. Its in the same vein but not identical. Hoping someome can offer some advice.

I was running Xp Home on a Packard Bell with a 60GB HD. I noticed things were going a bit slow, so I decided to back up the system, upgrade to XP Pro.

The install started, I selected upgrade, the process started, and then it said rebooting press esc to reboot now. The red progress meter maxed about 15 seconds later and the PC never rebooted. I waited. After 3 hours, still no reboot. I left it over night. The following morning still no reboot. So I did a hard shut down.

It seemed to be completeing the upgrade and it began copying necessary files etc. The system then reboots, but instead of booting to XP or further in the upgrade process, I am presented with the default screen when you autorun the XP Pro CD. I try clicking Install, nothing happens. If I click exit the system reboots. I then get a message that the upgrade did not complete and prompted to try again or quit or try a fresh install. I try again. Same thing. I tried repairing the installion, but the result is the same. I can boot in safe mode, but the screen is the same,the XP Pro Setup Screen. When I reboot (always but switching of power as no other method will work)I am presented with 2 options, Start Windows XP Professional, or Start Windows XP Professional Setup. If I choose setup I a prompted to insert the CD and then a message that Setup can not find the windows installation to be upgraded. Here is the twist. If I choose XP Professional, It loads the XP Setup screen, without the CD present, and if I click additional tasks, browse cd, then I get a bare bones Desktop. No drivers are loaded (network adapter, display adapter, modem, etc), but I can manually update them and no problem. I try to shut down, reboot, nothing works. When I do reboot, all previous changes are gone and I have to again reinstall the drivers etc. Tried restoring to an earlier time only to see all the restore points were gone. I also tried last known good configuration, which does nothing but the same.

So you say why not just restore from my back up. Well unfortunately I have used Norton Ghost, and spanned the backup across 15 CD's, One of them either 1, 15, or 2 is corrupt and Norton fails. I did all of the ignore errors etc in Norton, still no success. I tried them on another system and same problem, so pretty sure its not the CD-ROM. I could always go buy another stack of CD's Manually back up every file etc from this bare bones desktop, then format and reinstall fresh, but I really hope that is only the last option, as backing up 60 GB manually to CD is very time consuming.

I am no Windows Expert but it seems this is something in the registry or boot.ini or similar. Probably an easy fix but I am clueless.
Any ideas? Anyone?